Abstract Trauma is the most common cause of death in people under the age of 45 in the United States and costs more than $400 billion annually for medical care and lost productivity. The demand for trauma and surgical critical care workforce in the US has never been higher and a severe shortage of surgeons in this field is looming. The need for academic trauma and critical care practitioners that can not only treat patients, but have the necessary skills to conduct basic, translational, and clinical research to advance our knowledge and develop new treatments is even greater. The fundamental purpose of this training program is to provide surgical residents and pediatric critical care medicine fellows with an intensive two-year research training experience that will prepare them for an academic career in trauma and critical care. Our training program has evolved over the past 24 years into a highly structured and collaborative program that involves participants from multiple clinical and basic science disciplines. Our trainees benefit from a team-based mentorship philosophy, outstanding institutional support, and a broad range of educational opportunities. The training program is designed to teach surgical residents, pediatric critical care fellows, and conventional PhD postdoctoral fellows to assess a trauma-related problem, identify the key questions, formulate hypotheses, and then design and conduct the appropriate experiments to test the hypotheses and answer the questions.